Your Right to Know

DALLAS — Beset by hard-to-keep promises and a massive website failure, President Barack Obama
traveled to the heart of the Obamacare opposition yesterday to give a pep talk to the law’s
supporters.

Ad-libbing at a synagogue in Dallas, Obama implored volunteers and guides who are working to
help consumers negotiate the new insurance exchanges to stick with it.

“As challenging as this may seem sometimes, as frustrating as HealthCare.gov may be sometimes,
we are going to get his done,” Obama said.

The trip to Texas comes as his administration seeks to mitigate the damage from the website
glitches and from a public outcry over a promise he repeatedly made — if you like your insurance,
you can keep it — that turned out to be incorrect for millions of Americans.

Before leaving Washington yesterday, Obama tried to soothe the concerns of 16 Senate Democrats
facing re-election next year during a White House meeting. Many of those lawmakers are worried that
the problem-plagued rollout could negatively affect their races.

Highlighting the law’s benefits at Dallas Temple Emanu-El, Obama encouraged participation in the
marketplaces set up by the law.

The visit also cast a light on staunch opposition to the law in Republican-leaning Texas, which
has the highest rate of uninsured Americans — more than 23 percent. GOP Gov. Rick Perry has refused
to take advantage of a provision in the law to expand Medicaid to cover more of the working
poor.

Obama said Texas’ neighbors looked at the Medicaid expansion, which is fully funded by the
federal government for the first few years, as a no-brainer.

“I know that sometimes this task is especially challenging here in the great Lone Star State,”
Obama said to laughter. “But I think all of you understand that there’s no state that actually
needs this more than Texas.”

Perry shot back, accusing Obama of trying to “salvage his ill-conceived and unpopular program
from a Titanic fate.”

Texas also is among the 36 states not providing their own insurance marketplaces. Residents
there must sign up through the federal website that stumbled badly upon its launch.

In another development yesterday, the chief information officer at the Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid Services, whose office supervised creation of the federal website for health insurance, is
retiring.

Tony Trenkle will step down on Nov. 15 “to take a position in the private sector,” said an email
message circulated among agency employees.

As the agency’s top information officer, Trenkle supervised the spending of $2 billion a year on
information-technology products and services, including development of HealthCare.gov.